Friday, November 27, 2009

It happens all the time in movies and in literacy. The woman walks in. The man looks up and sees her. And time stops. She glows. He's speechless.

The first time I remember this phenomenon was watching the animated movie Anastasia. They go to the ballet and she's all dressed up fancy. He turns from having handed over their coats and sees her at the top of the stairs. And he just stops. She has that look that can stop a man. I wanted to be able to do that.

In the book Memoirs of a Geisha she's told that she won't be ready until she can stop a man just by looking at him. She reaches a point in her training when she's walking down the street and she looks at a man riding past on a bicycle. He sees her, and promptly crashes his bicycle into the nearest cart. She had a look that could stop a man. I wondered if I'd ever be able to do that.

Then earlier this year I was watching the movie IQ with a group of friends. Early in the movie, Catherine Boyd comes into the mechanic shop with her current boyfriend and Ed Walters sees her for the first time. And time stops. And she glows with a heavenly light.

At that scene I made a general comment to the room that I'd like to glow like that for a guy some day. And HP looked at me with a hurt look on his face and said something to the effect of, "some day?"

Did he already see me glowing? Had there already been a moment when he'd looked at me and time had stopped? Why was I not aware that he saw me that way? Why don't guys tell us when we do that? Why can't they make it more obvious and crash their bicycle or something so we know?!

The answers to those questions are probably similar to the answers we'd give to questions guys would ask about why we don't tell them we're interested or whatever other such things guys think about.

But still, it's nice to know that, maybe once, I have made time stop for a guy.

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comments:

I've noticed a couple of times it's happened to me, and it's kind of embarrassing when the person doing the stopping is 1. married and 2. stops as he's trying to walk up some steps and ends up falling... Bless his heart. I'd really like it to happen again, but this time with someone who is single and interested!